Feeding the Trolls

there's a post on here that's like "the worst thing a piece of fiction can be is mean", and while I agree with that, I think it being insincere is just as bad. nothing more obnoxious than a story that's constantly sneering and rolling its eyes at its own genre in a bid to seem clever and above it all.

toger we can achieve anything

self-care phrases to boost your confidence

January's #BirdWhisperer subject was the common loon! I feel like I've done a loon before but it was so long ago the file is long since decayed back into electrons. I really liked the simplicity and intensity of this.

Reference photo by Einar Gudmann 🦢

Such beautiful eyes, it would be a shame a tadpole crawled inside them.

A character can still be a great character without being a good person.

In fact, some of the best characters are terrible people.

Because a character’s worth should be based on how complex and interesting they are, not their morality if they were real.

Yes. A thousand times, yes.

🥺🥺🥺 he is so wonderful and I love him so much!!!

I am slowly losing my mind over the shift towards video as the default media format.

I do not find this to be an efficient way to absorb information. I am bored and distracted by the time the largely unnecessary introduction is over. I can't use ctrl+f to find the specific information I'm looking for. If there are instructions to follow, I don't want to have to constantly pause and back up to the part I need.

At least give me a fucking transcript.

I can read faster than you can talk and these videos are wasting my time.

and there was only one coffin

They were tombmates

*dipping a dart into an unlabelled flask and loading it into my crossbow* you better not try anything stupid because i don't even remember what this one does

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.

Thank you for this addition!

what it feels like listening to music and thinking about the character